kcenter_search

"Summon Search API uses an authentication scheme based on secret key verification via an HMAC-SHA1 digest. The API performs both authentication and authorization via the same HTTP Authorization header. Creating an Authorization header for an API request requires an access ID, a paired secret key, a client key, and access to certain elements of the HTTP request being authenticated. To create the Authorization header, specific request elements must be assembled into a string that uniquely identifies the request. This ID string is then turned into a digest using the HMAC-SHA1 algorithm as defined in RFC 2104. The digest is then Base64-encoded according to RFC 2045, and assembled into a header along with the access ID. When the API server receives a request, the first thing it does is check the x-summon-date header to make sure it is within a reasonable margin of the server time. If the header time is not within one hour of the server time then authentication fails immediately. If the request timestamp is acceptable, then the server goes on to check that Summon authentication is being used in the Authorization header. If Summon authentication is being used, the server extracts the access ID, client key and encoded authentication digest from the Authorization header, and looks up the paired secret key using the access ID. Finally the server performs the same algorithm described in the previous paragraph to produce a test digest, and compares the test digest against the digest provided in the Authorization header. If the two digests are identical, the request is authenticated."

"In 2007-2008, the DLF convened a Task Group to recommend standard interfaces for integrating the data and services of the Integrated Library System (ILS) with new applications supporting user discovery. This page gives access to the group's recommendation, related materials, and information on followup activities."

"An API for effective interoperation between integrated library systems and external discovery applications"

"But commercial vendors, smelling a new market, are stepping in. Serials Solutions, a subsidiary of ProQuest, released a software product in July called Summon. The company has been negotiating deals with publishers and content providers to create a searchable index of their content. It's like Google, except what Summon provides is an index of the "deep Web" of paid content. So now university libraries that pay for a subscription to Summon can let their users search their licensed content as well as locally owned stuff, together. Summon has 17 customers so far, including Arizona State University and Dartmouth College. The catch? It can be expensive. Andrew S. Nagy, senior discovery-services engineer at Serials Solutions, wouldn't say how expensive. But the cost of a subscription can run into the tens of thousands, said one university administrator who was not authorized to discuss price and thus wanted to remain anonymous. Summon also does not have permission to display the full text of articles."

"(...) the relevancy ranking within Summon is based on term frequencies as Aaron said, but many other algorithms are used as well, such as field weightings and inverse term frequencies to counterbalance any skewing from the full text content. Additionally, each record in Summon has a static rank that allows for balancing records from one collection against another to ensure all records are treated equally. "

- To Fix A Leaky Sink: Envisioning The Potential of Discovery Layers - LENS: Catalog Records and Additional Data Sources in the Aquabrowser Implementation at the University of Chicago - Automated Metadata Repurposing Using eXtensible Catalog Software - Equality of Retrieval: Leveling the Metadata Playing Field in Big Indexes

"The University of Calgary's Libraries and Cultural Resources became a beta partner with Serials Solutions' unified discovery service, Summon, in the spring of 2009. Since then it has worked to include metadata from numerous disparate systems in a single index to drive discovery in a Google-like environment. The University of Calgary has examined how MARC and other metadata schemas are mapped into Summon with an eye to ensuring the maximum possible population of index fields representing facets in addition to adhering to the established standards for cross mapping metadata schemas and indexing. The University of Calgary has investigated existing standards and worked closely with the Summon team to create mappings that reflect how MARC and other metadata can ultimately be used in big indexes. Combined with the normalization or collapsing of metadata records representing the same resource into a single metadata-rich record, fully leveraging MARC and other metadata in big indexes should not only level the metadata playing field but make competition between records a non-issue."

"We recently had a visit from Serials Solutions staff to talk about Summon. We are currently running an Endeca based catalog we call Mango for 11 State University Libraries. We were told that there are a couple of options for implementing Summon, one is to switch to their interface and use it as your whole catalog, with articles metadata integrated into your search results. The other option is to use their API to integrate the article searching into your next-gen catalog."

"Charge: - Explore metasearch services on the marketplace, including open source services. - Bring in vendors to demonstrate services. - Identify sites using these services. - Document comparisons, including functionality, what is needed to set up, what level staff to implement, cost differences, strengths and weakness. How would the service work with Collection Search Center? SIRIS? - Make recommendations for what and how to implement."

"A simple componentised framework constructed in Javascript to enable the sharing of Ajax Style extensions to a web interface. Although the drive for this is rooted in Library OPAC interfaces, the framework is applicable to any environment which, via identifiers contained within a html page, needs to link to or embed external resources. "

"My primary concern relates to the management of data and the suitability of search functions to allow for academic coverage that is comprehensive without being overwhelming. For example, a basic search of the term UK Transport Policy through Summon reveals nearly 60,000 results on the University of Huddersfield's Library website. There are of course filters to help sort the data, but my first impression is that these are not particularly effective (I also find the automatic updating of the results after the selection of a single filtering item to be very frustrating). Similarly, having had a brief play around with it, I find the advanced search feature slightly confusing with regards to the search terms that it uses (this assessment must be quantified by the fact that I speak as a regular user of MetaLib, so am of course used to the nuances of that particular system). For novice users of the system then, I wonder if they might just find it all a bit too much!?"

"One of the topics of discussion at last week's Summon Advisory Board was the status of de-duping records returned by Summon. On the face of it it seems to be a simple issue - if the titles and authors match, throw the duplicate records out and you're good to go. The Summon technical team explained why it's a little harder than that though. "

"My coworkers and I have been working with Summon over the last few months, and I have a few additional observations about how it's different from federated search:"